A Team Effort
by KADH
Summary: While Danny Ocean may have needed eleven, twelve, even thirteen, Gil Grissom only needs five. Although with Vegas being Vegas, these days robbing a casino just might be easier than engineering for Sara to have a whole night off.
1. The Set Up

**A Team Effort**

While Danny Ocean may have needed eleven, twelve, even thirteen, Gil Grissom only needs five. Although with Vegas being Vegas, these days robbing a casino just might be easier than engineering for Sara to have a whole night off.

"Love is life...

And if you miss love, you miss life," Leo Buscaglia

xxxxxxx

**The Set Up**

"Don't you have somewhere else to be at three in the afternoon?" Catherine Willows asked, popping her head into the layout room where Sara, Ray and Hodges were in the middle of combing through what little effects they'd managed to recover along with a headless, handless and footless torso out in Spring Valley two days before.

"Not really," replied Hodges who had volunteered to stay late yet again more to avoid having to go home than to help out. "Why," he began curiously, "you got a hot date?"

Catherine with all her usual good grace only replied, "Just tired of looking at you," before turning her attention to the others. "That goes for you two. It's late. Get out of here. Vic's not going anywhere."

Which was true. If they didn't discover something soon, there'd be little choice but to call the case and John Doe 1115 would be kept on ice until if and when any new evidence that might help identify him or his killers came to light.

There'd been a run of such cases lately, open-ended, without any apparent solution let alone resolution. Was frustrating as hell.

So the testy, tired side of Sara, who was in the midst of her sixth double in as many days, was tempted to say, "Why? So you can call us back in in four hours?"

But slightly wiser and more prudent as she presently was, she knew when not to pick a fight, that, and she actually enjoyed being on good terms with her current boss and friend. So without protest or further comment, she simply did as she was told and began to pack up along with the others.

As they were shutting off the lights, Hodges looked to Ray and asked with an almost too practiced casualness, "Got big plans for your nights off?"

But if Hodges was fishing, as Sara reckoned he likely was, Langston wasn't biting. "Just the usual."

"Sounds exciting," she laughed. "I'm almost jealous."

Ray asked, "Not looking forward to another night with John Doe?"

"I've had better dates. And worse," she reluctantly admitted.

xxxxxxx

Not long after seven, her cell's annoyingly insistent peel jarred Sara awake. She groaned, rolled over and without bothering to check the caller ID, barked, "Sidle."

"Well, it's nice to know some things don't change," came the amused drawl from the other end. "You're just as bright a ray of sunshine first thing in the evening as ever."

While there was no mistaking the rancor in Sara's, "Unlike you, some of us didn't get to leave work on time," Nick for whatever reason didn't seem to take the hint.

"I don't know how Grissom does it," he chuckled.

After a rather prolonged mental eye roll, Sara sighed, "He knows better than to wake me up after less than three hours of sleep. And please tell me this isn't a social call, Nick."

"419. Springs Preserve. Caretaker discovered the body when checking the grounds after closing."

"I think I changed my mind about the social call."

"Too late. Greg and I'll be out front to pick you up in twenty, Sunshine."

Considering the curse Sara muttered under her breath as she stumbled out of bed, perhaps it was a good thing Nick had hung up rather quickly after that, especially as technically he did outrank her these days.

xxxxxxx

Apart from her not so silent padding, the condo was quiet. Almost too quiet with Grissom away in Chiang Mai presenting at the 2011 Global Conference on Entomology until the weekend and Hank still at the sitter's. Sara hadn't bothered to pick him up, not for the couple of hours she knew she'd be lucky to be home. With her heading the on-call list for the week, she'd been lucky to make it back to sleep, so Robin was seeing a heck of a lot more of the boxer than Sara was. Besides, Hank disliked having his afternoon nap interrupted even more than Sara did.

Knowing she was definitely going to need the caffeine fix, she put a pot of coffee on to brew while she quickly got dressed. With the guys already on their way, a shower was out of the question. Luckily, she'd grabbed one before she'd gone to bed. So she settled on splashing water on her face in hopes that the cold might help clear her head.

God, she was getting old. Or at least feeling it more than she used to. Being up for days on end was proving a lot harder than it once was.

Then Nick and Greg were a full ten minutes late; utterly unapologetic about it and looking far too rested and being way too exuberant for not yet eight. Nick was driving or what he called driving. Greg had control of the radio and Sara had to sit in the back, none of which helped sweeten her temperament in the least.

Nor did Greg's query of "Someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed?"

As they took I15 out of town towards Paradise, Sara couldn't help but half wonder if disposing of one's overly ebullient co-workers might not be ruled justifiable homicide.

"Either of you going to fill me in before we get there?" she asked after no details were apparently forthcoming.

"419 at Springs Preserve," replied Nick.

"Yeah, I already got that part."

"Details are still a little bit sketchy."

"Wonderful." Sara was never all that keen on the whole _you'll be briefed when you get there_ routine.

In a not so suave segue to change the subject, Greg asked, "You ever been out there, Sara?"

While she'd heard of the multi-building museum and educational complex built around the springs that had originally supplied the city with much of its water supply, and although it was located just beyond Vegas' bright neon lights, she hadn't had much of a chance to visit in the four years the place had been open.

"Nope," she answered.

"That surprises me. Sounds like your kind of place."

"Been a little busy."

Greg only shrugged at her curtness. "At least it's a nice night for it."

_Warm, dry, clear and the moon a bright waxing crescent low on the horizon, yep, the perfect night for processing a dead body_, Sara rued but didn't say.

Not entirely looking forward to the prospect, she reached for her kit anyway as they pulled into the empty lot, but was taken aback when the guys made no move to do the same.

"We're going to sit this one out, aren't we, Greg?" Nick explained.

While Greg looked slightly crestfallen at this, he only smiled and nodded.

"You mean you're leaving me here alone with no backup and without clearing the scene first?" she asked, agog at the number of department policies being violated all at once.

"Trust me, it's clear," Nick insisted.

To which Greg added a strangely suggestive, "And you won't be alone."

"And," Nick chuckled, "I definitely do not want to supervise this one."

Sara simply goggled at them, thinking maybe she shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss Hodges' earlier passing query as they left the lab that day of "You ever get the feeling something weird is going on?"

"Besides," Nick said interrupting her musings, "we've got another call."

He held up his phone, which promptly buzzed. That it had and Greg's, too, in quick succession seemed to come as a bit of a surprise to them both.

As he scanned the message he sighed, "Saved by the page." Replacing his phone in his case he added, "Gotta run. We'll… uh... catch you later."

_Great,_ thought Sara as the two of them drove away. _Just Great_.

She was almost to the box office when a portly, bored looking security guard leaned out of the door to ask, "You Sara Sidle?"

"Yeah."

"It's just through there." He gestured vaguely down a dimly lit path. "In the Arboretum. Head past the Dr. Green Thumb sign at the Gardens Center, you can't miss it."

As she clicked on her Maglight, Sara shook her head, wondering just how many dead bodies they'd had out here for him to be more interested in whatever was playing on his portable television.

Keeping her eyes peeled for the telltale yellow stripe of crime scene tape, she crunched her way along the granite walk only to have her progress blocked by a dark suited figure crouched over something on the ground.

_Wow, the night was getting better by the minute_.

How she always managed to get stuck with yet another newbie detective whenever she ended up doing Swing coverage she had no clue. Who the heck were they hiring these days? Was Ecklie getting that desperate that they fielded officers who couldn't be bothered to follow the most simplest and basic of instructions? Who despite all their training still didn't seem to know better than to keep their hands to themselves until an investigator arrived?

Normally, Sara wasn't brusque, but she just wasn't in the mood tonight to deal with cross-contamination issues or all the additional paperwork they entailed. So it was with a tad too much vehemence that she put down her case and asked, "Did you sleep through the part where they said _look, don't touch_?"

Except it wasn't some rookie detective who rose and turned to greet her. It was someone else entirely. Someone as familiar as he was unexpected.


	2. The Switch

**The Switch**

"I leave the falling asleep during lectures to you, dear," Gil Grissom replied with a grin. "Besides, he's harmless," he said, extending his palm to reveal a large spider placidly sitting there._ "Aphonopelma iodus. _Handsome little fella, isn't he?"

If tarantulas could be thought of as comely, he certainly was. Large and yet weightless, it inched its way into Sara's open hand.

"Though a little confused. He's a couple of months too early to be out looking for..."

"Trouble?" Sara supplied.

"A mate."

Though when it came to arachnid reproduction that frequently amounted to the same thing. If the males survived the mating process, and that was often a very big if, they usually soon fell prey to other predators or the perils of nature itself.

When she teased as much in reply, Grissom chuckled, "And here I was starting to think you might not be happy to see me."

"Whatever gave you that idea?" she asked in return, replacing the tarantula within the much safer confines of a patch of underbrush far from any blindly stepping feet.

"More like who. Nicky texted to warn me that…" His voice trailed off as if he suddenly thought better about repeating Stokes' message.

But the damage had already been done. "Warned you that what, Gil?"

Grissom took a deep breath before admitting, "Said he didn't envy me as you were a little... cranky tonight."

"And he said this when?"

"Right after he got off the phone with you."

Sara had to work to stifle the string of invectives she would have liked to hurl at her colleague and so-called friend. All much to her husband's apparent amusement.

"_Tired_. Not cranky," she corrected once she'd composed herself. "There's a difference. And you're not exactly perky on only three hours of sleep. Nick isn't either."

"Well, I wasn't expecting you to be working quite so late," Grissom replied, though perhaps in hindsight he should have.

"Blame John Doe 1115."

"I have the feeling he's probably had a bad enough day as it is."

With a very long, heavy exhale, Sara sighed, "You have no idea."

But it wasn't until she felt the warm press of his hand on her cheek that she realized she'd closed her eyes.

"Honey, you okay?"

"Yeah," she nodded, reviving as she often did at his touch. "And I _am_ glad you're here."

They shared a smile.

"I just wasn't expecting you back until the weekend."

"I caught an earlier flight."

"Obviously," she laughed. "But it's not like you to leave early, particularly when bugs are involved."

"The last day was more sightseeing than science. Perhaps some other time," he said, the unspoken _with you _utterly unambiguous. "Besides, I had my reasons."

"Oh?"

When it rather rapidly became evident that no further explication was apparently in the offing, Sara said, "And you didn't call or text or email to let me know your change of plans because?" After all, she had just spoken to him early the day before.

"I believe there is a highly technical term for it -"

"Masculine forgetfulness?"

"_Surprise_."

"_Surprise_?" she echoed.

Normally, Sara wasn't all that keen on being on the receiving end of surprises. In her line of work, they seldom proved pleasant and on the personal side, surprises had long tended to be problematic. Like girlfriends you didn't know about or that what you mistakenly thought was a monogamous relationship turned out to be anything but.

Thankfully, things were considerably different with Grissom. And to be fair, she'd pulled her share of surprises on him since they'd gotten together. So she really had no room to complain or even talk when he returned the favor.

"I see. And all of this?" she asked, and gesturing to his neatly pressed suit, one of those he usually reserved for teaching or court appearances, added, "You're overdressed to be consulting on a 419."

To which Grissom only shook his head. "Nicky has no imagination."

"Okay. Leaving Nick out of it for a second, what are we doing here exactly?"

But instead of answering, he took her hand and tugged her further down the winding path, at the end of which, beneath an arbor decked out in pretty, twinkling fairy lights, a single table set for two sat waiting. The sight of which caught Sara up short so that she stood there for a moment stock-still and staring.

And there was no mistaking the agog amazement in her "You went through all this trouble for a date?"

But before he could even answer, she continued on with "What, were you afraid if you just asked I might stand you up? Though it would," she said with mock severity, "serve you right."

"How many dates have we had to cancel over the years?" was all he said in return.

"Too many," Sara conceded.

Not all that long ago, she had been called in early because of a particularly nasty multi-vic arson incident out in Parhrump, right in between the entree and dessert courses of an afore promised dinner Grissom had arranged for the two of them to have with his mother. Which meant that neither his concern nor his planning were exactly unwarranted.

"And since you haven't been able to get away lately, I thought you could use a break, if only for the night."

"Except I'm due in," Sara paused to check her watch, "in less than three hours."

"Actually, you're not."

"Since when?"

"Since I spoke to Catherine and Ray agreed to switch nights off with you."

"You called Ray?" she asked, unsure when those two had become phone call friendly.

"He was in the office when I called Catherine. Was more than happy to volunteer."

Of course that didn't mean anything. Her name still headed the call-in sheet and had all week, which was part of the reason she'd been working so much as of late.

As if he'd read her mind, Grissom said, "You're name's not even on the list tonight."

"Like that's ever made a difference."

"It does tonight. So hand over your phone," he said holding out his hand.

Which Sara did, watching him shut it down before returning it to her.

"Catherine's still got your number on speed dial."

He swiftly repeated the operation with his own phone.

"And if Nick knows were we are –"

Grissom promptly countered, "Temporary amnesia."

While her look said _Oh really?_ Sara was having a hard time concealing her grin.

"Should clear up by tomorrow night," he replied in all seriousness, which only made her laugh all the harder.

Trust Gil Grissom to be thorough. Although that did partially explained her boss's earlier insistence that they all call it a day.

What Grissom chose not to repeat to his wife were Catherine's closing comments.

"Well, at least one of us will be getting laid. Even if it is you. Which, Gil, I have to admit is -"

But the rest of her words had been drowned out by a low, deep, unable to be stifled splutter from the background, which Grissom knew had to have been Ray's.

Unsurprisingly a rather awkward silence followed.

"Grissom, you still there?"

"Yeah, I... Uh..." he'd begun.

"You gotta run," Catherine had finished knowingly. "Of course you do." And he could swear she was tittering as she clicked off.

Back in the present, Sara said, "You forgot Ecklie."

Even after she'd agreed to stay on at the lab indefinitely, Conrad Ecklie still hadn't exactly warmed to her. Not that she had to him either. Mostly they stayed out of each other's way. Only problem was that Conrad, as they both knew all too well, tended to be a stickler for rules and procedures, particularly when it meant their enforcement thwarted Grissom in some way.

"Out of town until Tuesday."

Neither precisely question nor statement, she said, "You didn't engineer that -"

"Serendipity," he smiled.

"And so you talked to Catherine and Ray and then arranged for Nick and Greg to do your dirty work?"

"If you mean I asked Nick to stop by to pick you up and drop you off, yes, I did. I have no idea why Greg tagged along."

"Same reason as always. Curiosity."

"He gave me the idea, actually."

"Greg?" Sara stammered in disbelief. "Since when are you so desperate that you're taking dating advice from Greg, Gil?"

While his expression plainly said, _You're joking, right? _Grissom simply replied, "I was trying to think of somewhere new to take you -"

"You mean somewhere I haven't been out on a call out before?"

Choosing to ignore this, he continued with, "When I remembered this breakfast we'd had, must have been three, almost four years ago when he was working on that history of Vegas book of his and he was talking about how the city has always been built on blood, going back to the murder of Archibald Stewart, Vegas' second major landowner way back even before Vegas was a city. When it was literally still _The Meadows_."

Sara cocked her head at this. "_Las vegas_ - _the meadows_," she translated. "I never made the connection before," she admitted rather ruefully. So much for all the time they'd spent practicing Spanish in Costa Rica.

"Anyway, the original draw, what first brought settlers to the area was the natural springs here. I thought you'd appreciate the vegetation."

She grinned at this.

"So Ray, Catherine, Nick and Greg all knew. What about Hodges?"

"Ah, Dave didn't know it, but he had the hardest job of all," Grissom said with a smile of his own. "Staying out of it."

Sara laughed, "_Loose lips_-"

"Exactly."

"And when," she asked, "did you arrange all of this?"

"Four days ago."

"From Thailand?"

"It was a couple of calls and a couple of texts. Anyway, aren't you the one always extolling the wonders of 21st Century technology?"

"I knew that phone would be trouble," she sighed. Why she had thought getting him an iPhone for his birthday was a good idea, she never knew.

"Are you done protesting yet?" Grissom asked, attempting to tug her into motion again.

"Not protesting. Just seems like a lot of work to score a date."

"Wasn't. Just called in a few favors."

"Yeah, I'm not so sure I want to know what you had to promise in return," she said, all too familiar with how most favors she ended up bartering for frequently required rather steep and oft peculiar returns.

"Terms weren't too bad," he shrugged. "One of the curators here is a friend of a colleague of mine. So I traded a couple of lectures for the preserve. _Bugs are a Gardener's Best Friend_."

"Cute. At least it wasn't _Bugs, They're What's for Dinner_."

"Entomophagy is the most eco-friendly solution to fighting and preventing world hunger," Grissom maintained.

"I'm still not eating insects, Gil. And you're digressing," Sara reminded him.

"So there's just the tip for Ernie."

"Ernie?"

"Security guard up front. Ray didn't want anything. Said he was just happy to do it. Catherine is expecting a Hermès scarf for her birthday this year. Nick wanted breakfast somewhere other than Frank's. Greg..." his voice tailed off again.

"What?" she asked, unable to contain a curious sort of smirk.

"Greg said since he was the one who gave me the idea, he wanted breakfast in bed for a week."

"Have fun with that," Sara chuckled.

"From you, not me," Grissom countered. "And I told him hell no."

"Then I guess I will have to think of some other, more appropriate way to thank them."

"Other than?"

"Than this," she replied and kissed him long and lovingly on the lips.

"Definitely inappropriate," he murmured once they broke apart.

"And Greg would probably like it too much."

Grissom laughed as he kissed her in return. And this time when he went to nudge her down the path, Sara readily took his arm.

"So," she began, "collusion, conspiracy, kidnapping under false pretenses -"

"I believe you went willingly, my dear."

"_Lured _under false pretenses then," Sara corrected. "I've got the _who_ and _where_ and _what _and _how_, but I'm still missing the _why_."

Though she was pleased by all the thought and trouble he'd obviously gone to, as she'd never really been worth all the effort before him, she still had a hard time understanding it.

"Do I need a reason?"

"No, you just usually have one."

"I missed you," he said simply.

The rejoining smile of hers erased all remaining vestiges of the tiredness from her features, even her eyes, which were always the last to lose its traces.

"That'll do."

"And I didn't get to see all that much of you before I left."

Being at the top of your field had some advantages, principally that you never suffered from a lack of job offers. Unfortunately though these days, Grissom's work kept him more out than in Vegas. Plus, Sara had been busy, even busier than usual in the last month or so. Not counting all the usual petty thefts, assaults and robberies, there had been half a dozen mysterious deaths eventually linked to contaminated drugs. A trio of Kentucky truck drivers had gone missing during a NATSO Convention. Vanished into thin air. Then that gruesome dismembered body discovered in the pantry of one of the many abandoned houses perennially up for sale in the city's severely depressed housing market. A serial rapist was on the loose, stalking underclasswomen at UNLV. And not least of all, Nate Haskell was back at large and getting into who knew what sort of mischief.

All in all, the last few weeks had been problematic to put it mildly. So much so that even when Grissom managed to make it home for any length of time, with her getting called in at all hours of the day and night, they still never saw as much of each other as they would have liked.

"I know," Sara said softly.

"Then in the middle of the plenary lecture I realized I'd forgotten our anniversary."

Her eyebrows crinkled at this. True, an actual night out to celebrate had been a little hard to orchestrate with the two of them several thousand miles apart, but Grissom hadn't forgotten. Even if it had only been a Skype call, it had been nice. In any case, Sara hadn't felt they needed to do anything special to mark the occasion; their life together was special enough.

Therefore she rather confusedly replied, "No, you didn't."

Nor had he, like some husbands, forgotten Valentine's Day. Nearly a month later, the jokes were still coming.

"Not that anniversary. San Francisco," he supplied. "Thirteen years ago. Forensic Academy Conference."

_Ah, that anniversary_. She hadn't thought of it either. That he had and with such fondness as to regret having missed it, touched her.

Consequently it was with much affection that she intoned, "Lucky thirteen."

"Superstitious, Sara?" Grissom asked amused. "Triskaidekaphobia doesn't sound like you. Besides, for some cultures thirteen is a lucky number."

"Like where?"

"Italy, for one." Came his matter of fact reply.

"And the lecture stimulated this thought how?" she asked. "I've never known you to be so easily distracted around bugs."

"You're always a distraction," he said with easy insouciance. "And the topic was _Blowflies, Bacteria and Inter-Kingdom Ecological Interactions During Decomposition_."

With anyone else, Sara wouldn't have regarded the thought as romantic, even complimentary, but this was Gil Grissom after all. And while the experience had been revolting enough on a sensory level to convert her to full-time vegetarianism, those few, very cold December days the two of them had spent observing blowfly and other insect invaders developing on decomposing pig flesh had been pleasant on a personal one.

She smiled. But then her husband seemed to be having that effect on her a lot these days.

"So I thought it was time to do what I should have done thirteen years ago. Made sure to take you to dinner," he finished.

Of course he hadn't then. Hadn't for seven years. And those seven years he'd waited had been far too long. This time, he hadn't wanted to wait seven days.

"I still would have been called in," she offered, a little rue in her smile, and that same tinge of regret they both seemed to feel when it came to the past. But with the past being the past, and therefore unchangeable, Sara tended to opt to focus more on the potentials of the present.

And while she did agree with Grissom's murmur of "Turned out okay anyway," she hadn't been able to resist teasing, very heavy on the sarcasm, "Yeah, dead bodies are quite the aphrodisiac." Although at the hint of a challenge in his gaze, she had to hastily add, "Insects notwithstanding."

Then after a moment she said, "We're here now. Even if," she paused to give herself a self-deprecatory once-over, "I'm not exactly dressed for it."

Her work vest, dark jeans and simple long sleeve t-shirt weren't exactly sexy. At all. And with Grissom chic as he was decked out in a suit and tie, she was definitely feeling underdressed.

"I have a solution for that as well," he said retrieving a garment bag from where it had been draped over a nearby bench.

Sara unzipped it to find the dress she'd bought to wear for The Gilbert Foundation party the month before.

"Right here, right now?" she asked.

"Since when are you shy?"

"Since when are you a voyeur, _Gilbert_?"

"There's a restroom near the box office," he replied. "And you did say you'd wear it if I took you out."

"_Only_ if you took me out," she corrected.

He chuckled, recalling precisely how adamant his wife had been on that point, when as she was puzzling over what to wear out to dinner with his mother, he'd suggested she could always wear that particular dress again.

He shrugged as if to intimate, _This doesn't qualify?_

Knowing better than to protest when her husband was wearing that imploring look of his, the one they both knew she never could resist, and considering he made so few requests and had gone through all this trouble, humoring him in this was the least she could do, Sara gathered up the bag saying, "Just give me a few minutes to uh… freshen up."


	3. The Score

**The Score**

Sara gave herself one last, not entirely satisfied once-over in the mirror.

The fact that she hadn't exactly had a heck of a lot of time to get ready before the guys showed up was proving to be of little consolation at the moment. Even if she had, as she'd honestly been expecting to spend the night with a dead body - and the dead never cared what you looked like - she likely wouldn't have spent over long on her pre-work toilette anyway.

Something she was rather ruing at the moment, particularly as with it not being what she regularly carried with her, there was little she could presently do now by way of make-up. But her hair she could at least attempt to fix, so she did, twisting it up off the back of her neck in the way she knew her husband was fond of, even if its securing required a little last-minute improvisation.

But the end result still remained that she wasn't anywhere near as well groomed and fashioned as she'd been for the Foundation party.

_But_, Sara mentally sighed, straightening herself up to her full height and smoothing the front of her dress a final time,_ it'll have to do. _

For while part of her was tempted to loiter a little longer, just to make her husband sweat a little - _would serve him right_ - her own curiosity trumped whatever desires she may have had in regards to turnabout or fair play.

Even without the ungainly encumbrance of heels, Sara still wobbled a little uneasily, unused as she genuinely was to the regular wearing of cocktail dresses. But once back at the arboretum, her awkwardness rapidly gave way to amusement as she'd returned to discover Grissom unearthing containers from what looked to her very well-acquainted with the phenomenon eyes like a to go bag.

"Take out?" she asked, resting a hand on his back in order to lean in for a better look.

His voice rife with merriment of his own, Grissom said, "I know it's more your specialty, dear, but -"

Except the rest of his tease got caught in his throat, struck as he was at the sight of her.

Normally, it wasn't like Gil Grissom to be speechless. Although Sara was the one person who did manage to do it to him, and all the time, even if she didn't always know it. Tonight however, there was no mistaking his wide-eyed wonder or frank admiration.

And any and all of her earlier unease, misgivings and insecurities swiftly melted away under his warm, appreciative gaze. For while she may have found Nick and Ray's dumbfounded astonishment irksome the month before, her husband's gaping approbation was something else entirely.

Pleased, she proceeded to greet him with a broad smile and as if they were just starting the night anew, a fluid "_Bonsoir, mon cher_," before she went to kiss him in not precisely continental manner. There was the traditional, if rather lingering, press to each cheek. But these were accompanied by the entirely unorthodox barest brush of lips along lips as she journeyed from one to the other.

Except Grissom, not content with just the hint of a kiss, caught her up as she went to return to his right cheek and they kissed long into that blissfully familiar breathlessness.

Both were beaming when they eventually broke apart. That of course didn't mean that Sara was above ribbing her husband.

"Gil, you have seen me in a dress before."

Besides, having packed it, he obviously must have seen it. Apparently, that hadn't mattered. And it hadn't. Even after all this time, Sara was as ever a surprise. Had always been. Probably would always be. But Grissom had grown to rather relish such surprises.

"What?" she mouthed at the intense, intent way he was examining her.

Grissom eased a stray strand behind her ear before murmuring, "I love what you've done with your hair."

Her hand fluttered up to make sure the sweep hadn't slipped.

"Seriously," he added to her pursed lipped rejoinder. Then fingering the stripped tip of the long swabs she'd exhumed from one of the various pockets of her work vest to fasten her makeshift do, Grissom intoned, impressed as he sincerely was at his wife's ingenuity, "Clever."

"Well, _necessity is the mother of invention_," she recited with the ghost of a grin. "And you don't exactly give a girl a lot of notice."

"You didn't need it."

Then in his easy and effortless as always _français_, he murmured, "_Tu es pour moi la plus belle_." _You are for me the most beautiful_.

With anyone else, it would have come off as one of those cheesy pickup lines French men were notorious for employing, but Sara knew her husband meant it, as hard as that was sometimes for her to fathom.

So the faint, white fairy lights weren't the only thing twinkling in her eyes when she replied, "You have to say that."

He shook his head. "No. Like you, 'beauty is always the exception.'"

"Flatterer," she laughed.

"Flatterer, no. Thief perhaps. John Berger," he supplied as the source of his quote. "But," Grissom said after moment, "you're missing something, if I recall."

And he withdrew a chain from his suit pocket, a familiar large teardrop amber pendant dangling at its end.

"Allow me," he said and she readily turned so he could fasten it. This soon done, he pressed a kiss into her shoulder as his palms ran down her bare arms. For a moment, they both luxuriated in the rush of skin on skin.

Once she'd revolved to face him again, for the briefest of instants, his eyes flicked down to take in the placement of the pendant before swiftly returning to hers, his gaze and grin turned thoughtful.

"You're right -" he began.

Though this time his eyes never left hers, his fingers leisurely traced the full length of the necklace, intimately grazing the sensitive skin along the rather revealing _décolletée_. "It_ is_ a little suggestive. Particularly with that dress."

And a suggestion of mischief joined the inherent desire in his not quite off-handed query of "Why do I get the feeling that wasn't coincidence, my dear?"

Having barely recovered her breath from the nearly electric contact, Sara settled on an enigmatic grin as her only reply. Truth was, she had selected this specific dress for exactly such a reason. However immune she might be to the tug of fashion, she wasn't to the desire to please and seduce, at least when it came to her husband. She certainly hadn't bought the dress to impress Betty.

"Complaining?"

"No."

Smoothing the lapels of his jacket, she said, "You don't clean up too bad yourself."

For while Sara had always found him attractive - grey hair or no - and was privately particularly fond of him first thing in the morning - well, more often evening for them - just awake and slightly tousled-haired, Grissom in a suit was sexy as hell. So much so, that the Sorbonne's mandatory suit and tie dress code had been one of her favorite parts of his guest lectureship.

"But I know you hate ties."

Grissom shrugged, "You wore heels the last time and I didn't show. The tie was the least I could do."

"Speaking of heels, did you bring them by any chance?" she asked. Her usual work shoes didn't exactly go with cocktail dresses.

"I did. But they're strictly optional."

She smiled. He really did know her all too well. But Sara opted for the heels anyway and was more amused than surprised to catch him staring at her with that curious, yet knowing look of a lover as she bent to slip them on.

"Why am _I_ beginning to get the feeling you did all of this just to see me in this dress?" she asked, intentionally echoing his earlier inquiry. "Or was it to see me _out_ of it, Gil?"

Apparently intrigued as he was by _that_ possibility, Grissom didn't immediately respond, causing Sara to shake her head and sigh, "Just tell me you didn't tell the others that was why you were doing it. You might not hear about it, but I will and I've already gotten enough grief about this dress as it is."

"While it is some dress, no. Shall we," he said, gesturing to the table.

She nodded. "I do just have one last question."

It was his turn to laugh. "Only the one?"

"Whatever happened to _some things are best kept private_?"

"What's so scandalous about a husband taking his wife out to dinner?" he queried in return.

"Well, it is you for one," she grinned. "And I'm sure they'll find something. They usually do."

As he drew out the chair for her, Grissom's expression plainly said, _Let them._

"So all of this really is just for dinner?"

His lips brushed her ear as he leaned in to whisper, "For now."


End file.
